Career Confessions: How voice coach Petrina Kow is helping people find their voice — literally and figuratively

On paper, Petrina Kow is a voice and public speaking coach. But that neat, functional title doesn’t quite entirely reflect what she actually does. The first and only Singaporean to be certified in the Fitzmaurice Voicework® and Knight-Thompson Speechwork® methods, Kow works with individuals who come to her wanting to fix their diction, their public speaking skills, and their presence in a room. What they leave with is often harder to name and more valuable. Some discover they don’t need fixing at all. Others find, somewhere between the breathwork and the silence, that they’ve started to like themselves a little more.

This is because for Kow, the voice isn’t an instrument to be calibrated or a skill to be acquired. It is, as she puts it, “the very embodiment of who you are”—what you think, what you feel, what you believe in. “Big V voice”, as she calls it. It is not the mechanics of sound, but the question of what we give voice to, and why. “When we limit ourselves and say, I only use my voice to order food or do the bare minimum, then we’re also diminishing a big part of ourselves,” she explains. Going to a voice coach, in Kow’s world, is not unlike going to therapy. You arrive thinking it’s about the mouth. It turns out to be about who you truly are. 

Kow spent years not quite knowing how to name what she did. She started her career as a radio jockey (the only RJ at that time to have a degree in mass communication and sound production); before pivoting between acting, voice-over work and MC-ing. It was only when she began teaching and coaching that the through-line became clear: every iteration of her work had involved the voice, and what the voice reveals.

In 2015, that realisation led her to seek out two of the most rigorous voice and speech training methodologies in the world—Fitzmaurice Voicework®, founded by Catherine Fitzmaurice and taught in MFAs and top universities globally, and Knight-Thompson Speechwork®—becoming the only Singaporean to be certified in both. Where traditional voice training tends to be didactic about the right pronunciations and enunciations, these methods work differently. They start with the body, the breath, and the nervous system. Today, Kow works with C-suite executives, award-winning actors and leadership teams at organisations including Google, HSBC and Netflix, and serves as Regional Director for Southeast Asia at the Fitzmaurice Institute. 

In 2020, she was diagnosed with nasal cancer. She is careful not to frame it as a turning point; she was already doing the work, and already knew the value of her voice. What the diagnosis gave her was less a new direction than a cleaner view of the one she was already on. “It became a very fast and almost great filtration,” she says. What remained was a clear sense of purpose—helping others find their voice, both literally and figuratively.

Is radio what you always wanted to do growing up? What was your dream?

I wanted to be a jazz singer in a smoky bar. I had lots of grand ambitions, and a lot of it had to do with prancing around on stage. In my younger days, it took the form of any kind of skit,  reenactments in my bedroom, spontaneous ballet performances. I was always very expressive that way.

You were diagnosed with nasal cancer in 2020. What were the symptoms, and how did you receive the news?

It was the end of 2020, a hard year for everybody. I constantly felt fatigued, but I was very good at pretending that it didn’t exist—as with most women who are holding many roles and doing many things. Because I use my voice all the time, what I did notice was a reduction in stamina during long-form work. I was recording an audiobook, and within an hour and a half I could really feel the tiredness. There were also a couple of quite major nosebleeds, which I assumed came from me being heaty; you know, all those excuses we give ourselves.

It was only after my husband complained I was snoring that I finally went to see a doctor. From that very first scope, I could tell in the tone of the doctor’s voice that something wasn’t right. Then I heard the word biopsy and did a scan. 

But at the time it was very much overshadowed by my excitement of seeing my own vocal cords for the first time. I went back the next day to my first-year acting students — we just so happened to be learning about anatomy — and said, "Guys, want to see my vocal cords?” They watched the entire two-minute video. Then I had to break the news. I think they were slightly traumatised [laughs]

When the diagnosis came, it was a real mix. But mostly it was a heaving sigh of — I couldn’t quite identify it, but I think it was relief. Relief in knowing what it was that was bugging me. And it was also almost like—you’re teetering on the brink, and you’re like, okay, you can just sit down. No need to balance on this weird intangible rope. Just get off the side and sit down.

Do you feel like you’re a different person since the diagnosis?

Yes and no. In many ways I’m still the same person. But what it did was help me clarify who I am and what I need to do. It became a very fast, almost great filtration—just take away all the nonsense that we don’t need. 

It’s not as if I’m so transformed and never the same again. Those habits are very insidious—they come back, the thoughts return. But what I’ve developed in the last five years is a more robust system for pulling myself back in the right direction. It really helped me, maybe with age too, to meet my challenges with a lot more grace and not be so hard on myself.

I always talk about the fact that I had two big gifts early in my life. One was losing my mother at 20, and then a refresher with my cancer. It makes you very present with how short and transient our lives are.

How has that gradual change reflected in the work you do today?

I’ve developed a lot more capacity for sitting with things. By nature, I’m very much a fast-paced person — I liked moving quickly, getting things done. And that was weirdly a reaction to being told all the time as a child that I was lazy. All the reports would say, Petrina could do better, if only she worked harder. I just wore that label.

I also remember not knowing what to call myself for the first twenty years of my career. People would ask what I was doing and I’d say, oh, I do voiceovers, I MC events, I act in things — like, not really a job. Maybe because it felt like it wasn’t one thing. My mother used to say, don’t be a jack of all trades and master of none. That narrative was very strong.

But building on that curiosity really led me to where I am today. All the iterations of my work had something to do with using my voice, and that gave me a lot of insight into how it applies in each situation.

For any creative going through an existential crisis right now, what’s your advice?

Sit with it. It’s important to acknowledge it and say, hey, what’s going on? Feeling these waves of ups and downs — it is the journey. There’s nothing wrong with it. When you are growing, you are undergoing some kind of adversity, and that is to be welcomed. The pain of the thing is the thing.

I also feel like I’m reclaiming this word artist. Too often we’ve held it as a very lofty ideal. How dare I call myself an artist. But if you express yourself creatively in a consistent way, whether through words, songs, cooking, crocheting, whatever, you’re an artist. All of us were born creative. All of us were born artists. The earlier you figure out that you are an artist in some way, the earlier you find your purpose.

Do people come to you wanting to speak better, and then the inner work starts?

Some clients come expecting to fix their voice, but they leave going, oh, I think I love myself better. They emerge with greater confidence. Then I also have very goal-oriented clients. I have this speech, I need to make people understand me. So we can do a little bit of both.

It’s never cookie-cutter: do this and you will be fixed in three weeks. I don’t think there’s ever an end to getting better. The more you do it, the possibilities start to avail themselves, and then you’re like, oh my god, there is a whole world of this I haven’t explored. Every day I’m in rooms with all kinds of different people and I pinch myself—I get to do this. I watch them grow, I watch them have moments of transformation. It’s honestly really beautiful.

People come to you wanting to get rid of their nerves when public speaking. What do you tell them?

When I first started teaching public speaking, I kept telling people not to be nervous. But don’t be nervous means what? I think that makes it worse.

What I tend to do now is reframe it. This feeling of nervousness is good—your nervous system is saying, hey, this matters, so use it. The language is so clear when people come to me: I want to get rid of my nerves, I want to conquer my fear. That’s the wrong framework. The very fact that your nervous system is responding is a good thing. It means you are alive. That electricity, that cortisol—that is actually what makes you compelling to watch and listen to.

The background work is two things: prep your material well, and prep your body so it is resilient in times of big waves. Learn to surf, basically. Some days you ride the wave and it’s spectacular. Some days it’s a washout—that’s cool. There is no best. There is just better.

What role does breathwork play?

We cannot ever talk about the voice without talking about breathing: it is the fuel. No breath, no voice.

One of Catherine Fitzmaurice’s [originator of the Fitzmaurice Voiceword] ideas is that breathing is meaning. There’s something about the intake of air before you express a thought—that moment of, what do I have to say?—that always occurs when you first take a breath. When we become very present with that, it is like a constant moving meditation.

In the Fitzmaurice voicework, we induce a tremor or shaking—to allow the body to feel what it’s like to pass air and voice through a nervous system charge. You’re basically rehearsing what it means to speak under pressure, so that when you emerge, your body is released and ready. It changes you on a very cellular level. It’s actually very restorative.

And when we experience full embodiment, it’s very clear. We straight away sense when a person is embodied. When we meet a voice that doesn’t feel authentic, we immediately go; something isn’t quite aligned here. That’s what we start to sense.